This is going to get updated more often, since I’m building a chroot
sandbox in which to run a javascript-enabled browser. Since I turned
JS off, I don’t really keep up with my blogging!

A Porch Garden Update

We have a small south-facing balcony in our apartment complex, and I have
an evolving garden space on the balcony. Somerecent pix
are available, as well as the pre-sabbatical version before my major rearrangement of the space. We’re approximately in zones 15 – 17,
coastal, since Sunnyvale is very near the Bay. We water every other day in the summer, and
every third to fourth day in the winter, depending on rainfall.

Tomatillos, figs, roma gold tomatoes, green peppers, basil.
We also get 1 – 2 strawberries every few days, and have rosemary
to clip when we need some. I have a big bundle of dried sage
hanging in the kitchen, clipped from the sage plant when I
transplanted it. We overwatered it, alas, and it died.

There’s a cherry tomato plant flowering now where the tomatillo
plant had been. I noticed it self-seeded from the transplant dirt,
so I let it keep going and cut down the tomatillo plant after it
had finished bearing. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for some
cherry tomatoes before it gets too chilly here.

The fig tree is near the end of its fruiting sequence– only a
half-dozen figs still ripening on the tree. Every week since
early July I’ve gotten 4 – 8 full size figs a week, which is
great! Putting a pipe into the new container so we can water
down into the inside has really done the trick. Mike deserves
all the credit, since he kept watering it in the old container
two years ago after I thought it had died off! Thanks to him,
it lived to come back last spring, and this spring I transplanted
it into the new container (a huge Rubbermaid trash can, actually!).

We’ve gotten a couple of quarts of tomatoes from the Roma bush.
Next year I think I’ll grow slicing tomatoes, since I
can also cook with them whereas the Romas are pretty boring to
eat raw. We’ve made a nice sauce for baking fish from tomatillos
and Romas in the blender, and for erev Rosh Hashanah we made a
big fresh sauce with the Romas, our basil, and our green
peppers. Yum!